Backup iPhone Text Messages with Syphone

Sep 27, 2009 - 12 Comments

iphone-text-messages-backup Backing up your iPhone text messages is made extremely easy thanks to a freeware utility called Syphone. Since the iPhone has a limited number of text messages it can store at any one time, Syphone allows you to backup all the text messages and read through the archived text messages yourself on your Mac in an easy to read iChat-like interface.


Syphone works for older iPhone models only with older iOS versions, but full feature list is quite nice:

* View synced iPhone SMS messages on your Macintosh
* Archive SMS messages
* Import/export SMS messages
* View SMS messages offline in an iChat-like interface with selectable colors
* Open Address Book contacts
* View the number of sent and received messages for each contact
* Support multiple iPhones

After downloading Syphone, all you’ll need to do is launch the program when your iPhone is connected and you’ll be able to start backing up all your iPhone SMS messages. The real question is, why does Apple not include this incredibly useful feature by default with iTunes?

Note: Syphone has not been updated to work with anything beyond iPhone 2.0 which sort of makes it useless for the time being unless you’re working with a much older iPhone model, thank you to Jack Frost for pointing this out

You can also choose to manually backup and read iPhone SMS backup files from your Mac or PC

.

Related articles:

Posted by: Paul Horowitz in How to, iPhone, iTunes, Mac Apps, Tips & Tricks

12 Comments

» Comments RSS Feed

  1. Royal chowdhury says:

    I have forgotten my backup password ..plus i want to export text’s from my iPhone 3g to iPhone 4s.how can i do that?suggest me whether there are any applications or not?e.g i found a sms export(app) ..is it good?:S plz help me out of this issue-From Bangladesh.
    Thanks

  2. Leslie Gavin says:

    Hey Robert. Thanks for the tip. The decipher text message tool worked great for me. I’m so happy that I’ve finally been able to back up these old text messages!! Yay. ; )

    re>>For saving or exporting iPhone text messages to your computer there is also this program http://decipher-media.com/iphone-tools/>>

  3. Robert Anderson says:

    For saving or exporting iPhone text messages to your computer there is also this program http://decipher-media.com/iphone-tools/

    Look like it’s only $5. I haven’t tried it, although I like the idea of being able to save your sms messages! Good luck.

  4. Steven says:

    I don’t think it’s a good idea to use insend’s iphone backup sms extractor. You have to upload your messages and contacts to some website and get back a report. Doesn’t make me feel good

  5. Paula says:

    I have backed up my iPhone sms with your guide. Thanks.
    But if you want to backup your music, videos, photos, podcasts and TV Shows between iPod/iPhone and Mac and add them to your local iTunes library, here is a tip:
    http://www.ipod-tool.com/mac-tools/imacsoft-iphone-to-mac-transfer.html

  6. BadGirl57 says:

    When Rerun realizes this, he starts to run after the truck, with no success. ,

  7. DanY says:

    Thanks. This is good for mac users. But for Windows users, I use this iPhone to pc backup program called Tansee iPhone Transfer SMS

    http://www.gutensoft.com/Utilities/Tansee-iPhone-Transfer-SMS.htm

    Hope it helps.

  8. Jeff Preston says:

    We had more than 50,000 SMS messages on our iPhone and Syphone was crashing. Eventually I find PhoneView which it turns out I already owned because of Mac Heist 3. PhoneView did the trick and it let me get my MMS too!

  9. Jack Frost says:

    Yeah, thanks for the commercial app spam, “backup sms”.

  10. Jack Frost says:

    The app was released in 2007, and according to their forum, only works with iPhone version 2.0 or older – with no plans to update.

    I think that’s useful information that should be worth mentioning both on their product page and also here in this entry.

  11. Boo says:

    Running it on Snow Leopard doesn’t work. The iPhone 3G is connected, but it still says “No iPhones found!” :(

Leave a Reply

 

Shop on Amazon.com and help support OSXDaily!

Subscribe to OSXDaily

Subscribe to RSS Subscribe to Twitter Feed Follow on Facebook Subscribe to eMail Updates

Tips & Tricks

News

iPhone / iPad

Mac

Troubleshooting

Shop on Amazon to help support this site